by Nyx Smith
Mother, as Neurocomp's VP for Research, has had to face the brunt of the Security Service investigation regarding the GCP project. Like father, she feels personally responsible for all that has happened. She feels that tighter controls should have been placed on the GCP deckers. How much worse she would feel if she knew the whole story, the truth of Gamma's origin, but this she will never know. The story will never be told.
"If my own daughter had not revealed the traitors," Mother says, softly, "I could not bear to go on living."
The words move Machiko deeply. She knows the depths of her mother's pain, the shame she feels. Machiko can only answer, "If not for my mother's many lessons, I would not have succeeded in revealing anything."
Her mother's eyes meet hers. The moment grows intensely personal. Everything they have ever meant to each other is right there between them. Neither has any doubt as to the reality of their relationship, a bond never to be broken. Again, they embrace. Mother whispers, "I go to meet Sashi-san tomorrow morning. You still have not said whether you will join me."
"I have not yet decided."
"A child should honor her genetic mother."
"I do not know if this is possible."
"I do." Mother touches Machiko's cheek, says simply, "There is nothing you could not do, if you wish to do it."
"If you want me to go with you, I will go."
Mother joins their hands again. She spends a time gazing toward the pond. She speaks in an earnest tone, saying, "Machiko, I believe that this lady cares about you very deeply. I feel it would be wrong to hold the past against her. We must at least give her the chance to show us her true feelings."
"If that is your feeling, I will go with you."
"Do you not agree?"
"I do not trust myself to agree or disagree. I know what duty demands of me. It is my heart that feels betrayed." Mother seems dismayed, even anguished. Expressively, she says, "Daughter, the heart is easily betrayed. It comprehends only the now. It does not easily make allowances. Understanding comes only with time. Acceptance comes only with time."
"There has been little time."
"When you first began at the academy, you recited a certain aphorism over and over. Something you heard from your sensei. I have never forgotten. It was your answer for everything. Do you remember? Who is the greater servant? you would ask. She who is talented and wise and indulges in selfish thinking? Or she who is stupid and dull, but thinks only of her lord?"
Tears as hard as steel rain rise into Machiko's eyes. She brushes the tears away, but more follow. Yes, she remembers. She could not possibly forget.
How loudly that lesson of the ancients resounds now. Selfish thinking—is that not the key to everything? It led the GCP deckers to murder and treason. It gave racism the power to scar Gamma for life. And now it brings Machiko to take umbrage with Sashi-san, and with the man said to be her genetic father, the man who has made possible everything she values: Nagato Combine, the Guard, the entire course of her life.
She should look at all she has been given. Consider the parents who raised her. Could any life have been more fortunate? more auspicious? She has been deprived of nothing. Nothing but a few scraps of truth that now seem like mere illusions.
"You are very wise," she murmurs. "You know me so well."
"I know your heart," mother says with a small smile. "The rest is sometimes very puzzling."
"My heart knows only love for you."
"And mine for you."
Again, they embrace; then, Mother rises, saying she will try once more to sleep.
With only her ears, Machiko follows her mother's steps back through the garden to the porch, then through the door and into the house. Quiet descends. She closes her eyes and draws her legs up to sit lotus-style and consider, contemplate. It is a while before she becomes aware of another presence, a new presence. She does not have to open her eyes to confirm who is there. She feels it in his presence, the sense that, once he is settled, kneeling, facing her from across the pond, he is as stable as the earth, rooted in the ground.
"You said nothing of the Tir," Kuroda-sensei quietly intones.
Faintly, Machiko shakes her head. She has said nothing to either her mother or father about alliances with Tir Tairngire, of programs of exchange, or of the man said to be her genetic father. For the sake of Nagato Combine, its Chairman, his New Way, and all hope for the future, such things must never be told. Sashi-san has already made this very clear.
"You have questions. Doubts."
Machiko considers, and says, "I have parents who love me. For this, I am very grateful."
"And what of Okido-san?"
"The Chairman?" Machiko is unsure what to say. "Once, I believed that I understood him. Now I wonder if I know anything of him but the face he chooses to show."
Kuroda-sensei says, "If you know the Way broadly, you will see it in all things. You will understand the duty of a man bearing a mountain of obligation. You will perceive the sacrifices that have been made. You will discover a devotion even greater than your own. Beyond even the fanaticism of a warrior."
Perhaps this is so. If Honjowara-sama is indeed the man she has always believed him to be, it must be so. "Would not such a man desire to honor his every obligation, regardless of how large or small?"
Slightly, Kuroda-sensei bows. "It is so."
Machiko breathes deeply, and says, "Such a man should fulfill his obligation to his genetic daughter. He should face her and tell her of the past, of the many things a daughter has the right to know and understand."
Again, Kuroda-sensei bows. "And now a man awaits only your request or summons, humbly, with regret for what has happened, and hope for what may be. He desires to speak of all these things."
"He asked you here to say this?"
"He did indeed."
Machiko, then, can only bow and say, "Then I will go and meet with him. And I will listen to all he has to say."
A generic daughter's obligation.
One she will honor most willingly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nathan Yale Xavier ("Nyx") Smith began his writing career by revising the Twenty-third Psalm to excoriate Richard Nixon about Watergate, only to be called down to the principal's office, and has been getting into trouble ever since. His early experiences as an altar boy (passing out from the summer heat) perhaps inspired his late-adolescent abhorrence of anything resembling a suit and tie, as well as a lingering aversion to ever becoming a "suit" himself. He has not seen a barber (or other tonsorial artist) in ten years. He has worked as a dishwasher, custodian, landscaper, shipping manager, bookkeeper, and computer operator while making no money for lots of writing. He drives an old car that's very nondescript. He originally thought a cyber-esque world with magic and elves a pretty strange idea, but then Striper came along and asserted that it all makes perfect sense.
The author strives always to avoid arguing with characters of as menacing a stripe as Striper, and recommends this practice to all those with a hankering toward longevity.
Nyx Smith continues to live in a basement on Long Island (New York's most notable sandbar) along with a salmagundi of doloris nocturnum, but has traded his Selectrics for a 486/33 that occasionally shows signs of paranatural infestation. He invites readers of his Shadowrun® novels Striper Assassin, Fade To Black, Who Hunts The Hunter, and this book, Steel Rain, to send him comments, critiques, or complaints about his writing, characters, plots, and so on, in care of FASA Corporation, 1100 W. Cermack, B305, Chicago, IL, 60608.
Copyright
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
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ooks (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
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First Published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
First Printing, March 1997 10 98765432 1
Copyright © FASA Corporation, 1997 All rights reserved
Series Editor: Donna lppolito Cover: Romas
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Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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